Sunday, 11 November 2012

Sunday Poem

THE LANCET

I used to have this marvellous lancetThat I bought from a barber in DorsetWhose ancestors used to blood letAt a seventeenth-century conventBefore anyone knew about safe sexOr viruses contracted from insects.It used to be part of a whole setWith mother-of-pearl insetShaped like the head of a egretAnd mottled with golden fleurettes.

It blushed like a rusty sunsetWhere the darkening blade and grip met.The barber said something I can't forgetAbout records they found in the conventGiving seventeenth-century estimatesOf people who died from the lancetIn this particular parish in Dorset."They didn't know plasma from platelets,"He said as he lit our cigarettes.

I felt a little like I'd lost a bad bet,Helped bad men settle an old debt,Until I parted with the antique lancetAt a rural flea market in QuebecWhere I passed the thing off as a barrettePlucked from the head of Queen Antoinette.